Garmin Colorado 400t Handheld GPS Unit with U.S. Topographic Preloaded Maps
by Garmin
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List Price: Category: GPS or Navigation System See more product details |
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Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Garmin Colorado 400t Handheld GPS Unit with U.S. Topographic Preloaded Maps
Customer Review: Fast Acquisition But Hard to Read
Summary: 3 Stars
I purchased my Colorado 400t from Amazon about a month ago. It was VERY affordable through Amazon, and fairly easy to use right out of the box. I recommend going through each Colorado function immediately after purchase and looking at all of the options available for each one, as many are not intuitively obvious. There are lots of nifty features available on the system.
The default map overlays are okay, not very detailed but sufficient for street navigation. The maps are not very well geo-synched. E.g., With a position accuracy of less than 10 ft the GPS position of my porch appeared across the street when displayed. I attempted to install more topographic detail using one of the National Geographic software sets, but the software kept crashing during installation. It appears to be incompatible with Windows XP and/or the underlying Garmin operating system. One of the best enhancements to this GPS is to synch it up with Google Earth. That's lots of fun. I'm waiting for more detailed wide-area coverage maps from either Garmin or other sources.
Satelite acquisition happens very rapidly and maintains good signal strength once acquired. The display of satellite positions, signal quality, and other information is pretty handy. It seems to work fine inside a car.
My big problem with the Garmin Colorado 400t: The display contrast and backlighting is so weak that the system is vitually unusable in bright sunlight and difficult to discern in other than dim lighting. It would be helpful to have brighter lighting and I will retrofit my Colorado with a brighter manufacturer or second-source lighting system if one becomes available. Battery life is good, but I'm willing to accept less to get better legibility in sunlight.
Big takeaways: Positives-Good accuracy, fast acquisition, lots of neat features, compatibility with Google Earch. Negatives-Dim display, lack of detailed map coverage available, not-very-accurate geo-synching of maps for precision placement of positions on the display.
Customer Review: it's a cross-grade not an upgrade
Summary: 2 Stars
This isn't some lengthy indepth review. Just some quick notes after the first time out.
The Rocker wheel is interesting but much slower to use and a more work to use than the input controller on the 60cx and csx. Also it's placement that the top makes operating it with one hand very difficult, and I have big hands.
I don't know what they were thinking when they chose the material to cover the screen. Scratched it the first time out, it's cheap soft plastic. The kind that might be acceptable if you are using it in your car but definitely isn't acceptable for outdoor use. Makes the early iPhone plastic seem like steel. They really need to replace this, actually it's bad enough they need to recall the units and fix them.
Battery life is lower than previous models as well. Turn off audio cues, turn off backlight, get some Nickel Metal Hydride re-chargeables ( they last about 20% longer than normal batteries ), and carry spares.
The UI design is bad. It's pretty but they hid everything that's not "play". Saving tracks is cumbersome, still haven't found Trackback, route management is cumbersome. Things are labeled badly. More devotion was paid to games, viewing photos, and useless fluff, than to making this a usable unit for outdoor enthusiasts.
That said it's nice that this comes with some pre-loaded maps. It seems pretty accurate. The new carabiner attachment is a big improvement over the plastic clip on the older models.
The hi-def screen is nice, though not essential. Would gladly trade it for more battery life.
Last comment is this that software still isn't mac compatible. This is absolutely inexcusable. Waypoint and Trip manager are not exactly sophisticated applications, re-tooling them in Java or Adobe Air or porting them to the Mac, which Garmin has been promising to do for years, just isn't that big a deal. To get my data out I use gpsbabel, but I can't imagine most users are gunna go there.
Customer Review: Great product once I got a good unit...
Summary: 5 Stars
After reading the reviews, both pro and con I decided to give the 400t a try. After all, a company like Garmin would surely have resolved such blantant faults as were encountered by some of the reviewers, right? Well, yes and no. The unit I bought was horrible. The promise was there, but so was the ridiculously poor battery life 4-6 hours with 2650mAh batteries, constant self-rebooting and shut-down, and freezing requiring the batteries to be removed to reset the unit. I installed the latest OS (2.51 beta) with no improvement. I called customer support who suggested I return the unit, which I suspected was just a lame response to my problem. Well, I was wrong! The new unit is great - battery life of 14-16 hours, no rebooting or freezing, and everything works great. As others have noted, the manual clearly lacks the necessary detail to fully understand some of the advanced capabilities, but that can be dealt with. Clearly, there is a hardware issue with earlier units and if you experience any of the known problems you should immediately exchange the unit for a newer model. However, once past that issue I was very pleased with the unit. Note that the preloaded US Topo map has inaccurate street locations. I purchased City Maps 2008 and everything is now dead-on. Note that the unit can use multiple maps at the same time, such as topo info from the base map and street info from City Maps. I also have the National Parks West, 24k Topo and have all three active most of the time. However, once off the road I shut off City Maps so the topo lines from the base and topo maps display rather than just the elevation shading which is the only elevation info that displays when City Maps is on. Excellent turn-by-turn navigation with routing and ETA times far more accurate than than the factory unit in my Expedition. After my initial dismay with the first unit, I have been extremely pleased with the replacement exceding all expectations.Customer Review: Could be better
Summary: 3 Stars
There are several features about this unit that are very good but just as many or more that are not so good. It is very accurate and it holds the satellite signal extremely well. The color display is very good although difficult to see well in bright sunlight. The unit is very "power hungry" and this is probably why the brightness is limited. It is also why the unit is designed to power up with the display very dim. It is brighter when used in the vehicle if plugged into the power outlet using the optional adapter.
I use the unit primarily for hiking and geocaching and I really like the geocaching features especially the ability to go "paperless". I do not like the method of entering notes or coordinates into the unit. Instead of the displayed letter, number and character wheel, a virtual "keyboard" display would be much easier to use even with the same controls. A system similar to the Delorme PN-20 would be much better. Geocache files are handled differently than waypoints. One cannot delete geocache information from the unit but must connect to the computer to manage geocache files. Waypoints can be deleted individually directly from the unit without the computer.
A word of caution: the base map files and preloaded Topo files are all combined into one large file which is NOT isolated or protected and can be deleted accidentally very easily. Be very careful!
Road routing is excellent with the optional City Navigator software.
One does not have an option for sorting geocaches or waypoints; default is by distance. If one knows the name or GC code, a search can be done fairly easily. It would be nice to have the option to sort either alphabetically or by distance.
Although the Garmin Colorado is quite functional, it is far from the unit I expected. If I could return it now, I would do so. Then I would buy the Delorme PN-40 which will be available later this month.
Customer Review: Accuracy unreliable
Summary: 2 Stars
This would be a fantastic unit if the accuracy was there. The Geocaching functionality is great, the 3D topo maps are beautiful for a base map, and the unit is fun to use. Compared to Garmin's star product, the Garmin GPSMap 60CSx 2.6-Inch Mapping Handheld GPS, it's a little harder to figure out how to do various things such as enter a route, and figure out the distance between two points. I would have kept the unit if only it were accurate. I had trouble finding a cache and noticed the location of the cache kept bouncing all over the place. I started to test the unit by taking a reading and checking it against Google Earth and Nat Geo Topo! software, as well as another GPSr. It was off by as much as 400 ft, and only as close as 40 ft. I also tested it with a few known benchmarks. At that point I did some research to determine if there was some calibration I could do to solve the problem, and found that other people have experienced the same problem. Several people reported it as a recurring problem cured by a power reset. My guess is the new chip Garmin put into the Colorado is not as reliable as the SiRF Star III chip used in the past. If that is the case, an update will not cure the problem. I personally want a unit I can rely on and needed to purchase now, so I exchanged it for the well regarded but older Garmin 60CSx, which contains the trusted SiRF Star III chip. If you really want the new features and can hold off buying, I recommend you wait until the accuracy has been tested by consumers for a longer period of time. If you don't mind an occasional reset, and having to guess if your unit is giving you accurate readings or not, this is a good GPSr.